Overlooked People, Places and Practices: Shifting the Gaze in Asian and South African Cities
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: Overlooked cities, overlookedness and counter-overlooking: with these three terms, the Special Issue (SI) evokes reflections on so-called global urban studies from the perspectives of the mis-, mal-and un-recognised elsewheres.It focuses on intentionally or unintentionally ignored and off-the-map people, places and practices, specifically bringing together such reflections from academics and artists who focus their research on South African and Asian cities.As such, the SI illustrates the generative potential of thinking, writing and caring with an attentiveness to structural absences and omissions; developing methods, concepts and an ethos of collective counter-overlooking (or counter-looking, as one of the authors suggests).Systemic injustices and inequalities embedded in so-called global urban studies as well as urban policy and practice have been widely recognised (Becerril, 2024;Jazeel & McFarlane, 2010;Robinson & Roy, 2016).This includes a long trajectory of research on the importance and dynamics of small urban centres inspired by the seminal work of Jorge Hardoy and David Satterthwaite (1986); the invitation to attend more to the differences and diversities among a world of cities as outlined in Jennifer Robinson's Ordinary Cities: Between Modernity and Development (2013); and further postcolonial urban critiques, which urge urban scholars to systemically shift our focus from selected Western cities to the urban majority (Bhan, 2019;Ortiz et al., 2025;Simone, 2018) and to engage in pluriversal urbanism (Moreno-Tabarez et al., 2023).The articles in this SI offer provocation for a further shift: From overlooked cities to overlookedness and overlooked urbanities as a form of structural neglect that straddles everyday urban life.The issue was conceived as part of a seminar series curated by the Overlooked Cities Collective (the collective) and funded by the Urban Studies Foundation titled 'Overlooked Cities: Thinking and Doing Global Urban Studies Differently'.The contributions to the issue draw from a conference and workshop run by, for and with early-career researchers in Bandung, Indonesia, and a colloquium in Bloemfontein, South Africa, held in September and October 2023, respectively.It is thanks to the conversations and engagements during these seminars that the intellectual project developed, grew and changed.What started off as a series on 'Overlooked Cities' gradually transformed into a more nuanced notion of 'overlookedness' or neglect.Such neglect can be with or without intentions, but as the collective Urbanisation 10(1) 7-10, 2025
Source: Urbanisation
Authors: Julia Wesely, Isolde de Villiers
Institution: University of Vienna
Language: English
Subfield: Urban Studies
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
Funder: Urban Studies Foundation
OpenAlex ID: W4410923116